Trump campaign airs grievances as Democratic convention begins

Former President Trump lashed out Monday at Vice President Kamala Harris, criticizing her father, falsely stating that she was recruiting undocumented immigrants to vote and claiming Democrats overthrew President Biden as part of an illegal “coup.”

His remarks came at a manufacturing company in York, Pa., in what had been billed as a speech about the economy.

“Kamala has no idea what the hell she’s doing,” Trump said. “Her father is a Marxist professor, and I believe he taught her well. ... I wonder if they knew that when they did an overthrow, or a coup, on Joe Biden?”

The speech — part of a tour of battleground states this week — came on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In criticizing Harris’ Jamaican-born father, Donald Harris — the first Black person to be granted tenure in Stanford University’s economics department and a prominent scholar of Marxist theory— Trump once again delved into the kind of rally-style personal attacks and conspiratorial claims that have undercut his message during events billed as policy speeches.

In recent days, Trump has insulted Harris’s appearance by saying he is “ much better looking than her,” falsely claimed images of her crowds were generated by artificial intelligence, and questioned whether she really is Black.

On Monday, Trump — who has been trying to regain the national spotlight amid Harris’s rise in the polls— said Harris “wants to be promoted to the job-killer-in-chief” and falsely alleged she was recruiting undocumented immigrants to cast ballots.

“They’re signing people up as we speak ... and they don’t care about the laws,” he said.

Trump, convicted this year of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor, added that “the only one that gets prosecuted is somebody that would talk about the unfair election.”

“But when you steal and rob and kill and so many other things, when you sell drugs and destroy people’s lives, nothing happens to you under Kamala,” he said.

In regard to the economy, Trump promised to increase fracking, rapidly approve new energy infrastructure and “build American, buy American, and hire American.”

Trump is scheduled to appear Tuesday in Detroit to talk about crime, on Wednesday in Asheboro, N.C., to talk about national security, and on Thursday at the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County, Ariz., to discuss immigration. On Friday, he is set to discuss his plan for tax-free tips at events in Glendale, Ariz., and Las Vegas.

On Monday, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, campaigning for the president at Trump Hotel & Tower Chicago, repeated Trump’s false claim about an illegal coup.

“They’re gonna formally kick the president to the side of the road tonight,” Johnson said of the first night of the Democratic convention. “Their coup is complete. Their nominee will be somebody who did not get one vote in the primary. They call this defending democracy?”

Vance, in a speech Monday at DiSorb Systems, a Philadelphia company that manufactures waste management products, blasted the Biden-Harris administration for inflation and the high prices of groceries and gasoline.

He said that Trump would “stop the reckless spending that you’ve seen from the Kamala Harris administration,” cancel “ridiculous regulations” that “make it hard to manufacture and build things” and that he would “drill, baby, drill” to drive down energy costs.

Vance, a former Marine, also continued his attacks on the military service of Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whom he has accused of “stolen valor” and avoiding a tour in Iraq. Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard before retiring to run for Congress in 2005, months before his unit received orders to deploy. In 2018, Walz, who was never in a combat zone, mentioned “weapons of war, that I carried in war.” (The Harris campaign has said he “misspoke.”)

“Before the end of the campaign, Tim Walz is going to be talking about how he was carrying an M16 through the jungles of Vietnam,” Vance said Monday.

“The closest Tim Walz has ever come to combat ... is when he let rioters burn Minneapolis to the ground” after the police murder of George Floyd, said Vance, who was deployed to Iraq for six months in 2005 and did not see combat.

In Chicago, the Democratic National Convention began just one month after Trump received a hero’s welcome at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, appearing with a bandage over his right ear after having just survived an assassination attempt during a ally in Pennsylvania.

Three days after the Republican convention ended, Biden — who had faced growing pressure from Democrats to quit after a disastrous debate performance in which he zoned out and struggled to complete sentences — dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.

According to a poll released Monday by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about half of American adults have a favorable view of Harris, while 41% have a favorable view of Trump.

Trump is viewed more favorably by men. Harris is viewed more favorably by women.